


Mad

by mildred_of_midgard



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, The Iliad - Homer
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 15:38:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8850550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mildred_of_midgard/pseuds/mildred_of_midgard
Summary: Achilles grieves at Antilochus' funeral--but not for Antilochus.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this over ten years ago and dug it up today.

What usually seemed an unending drone was broken, choked, and uneven, as Nestor spoke about lost youth over the pyre of his most cherished son. Achilles had also the right of final words, but he stood in silence with his eyes fixed on the battlefield, where flies buzzed over the blood and gore that remained after the bodies had been carted away. None of this was real, anyway. Driving his spear into Memnon had been scarcely more so, but he could still taste the spray of blood and feel the pull on his muscles from the thrust.

_I could have saved him._

No one had bothered to ask if he wished to say anything, not out of disrespect, but because the Achaeans knew Achilles no longer walked among living men. How many times had he not even heard the words that were spoken to him and looked through the speakers as though they were the ghosts and only the ghost at his side was real? At length his Myrmidons merely asked for orders and gave reports, counting themselves lucky with a response, and not even Agamemnon tried to move him. Only Priam, once, had moved him and made Achilles see him as real.

_I could have saved him._

The old man of Pylos torched the body, and the resulting flame did attract Achilles' attention. His spirit had been flame once, and even now he could not resist the quickening that draws like to like. But it paled, doing nothing to warm his numbness, and when he tried telling himself that the burning body once belonged to a friend, he couldn't quite believe it. He tried the words a second time, and his heart did skip a beat, but only because he had made himself forget which pyre it was, and the threatening panic subsided when he remembered.

_I could have saved him._

He could guess what everyone thought: that in his lapses from reality he had not noticed Antilochus' plight until it was too late, arriving in time only for revenge, but in truth the madness ran deeper than anyone knew. For in the heat of battle Achilles had watched Antilochus die, with an unrecognizable coldness. Once before he had lost a friend through his inaction, and he hated Antilochus for living. (Hated himself for living.) So why would he save this friend if he had let that one die?

_I could have saved him._

Memnon died as Hector died.


End file.
